Over the past several months, I’ve turned my attention to the future of the news business. Many of my fellow journalism students have done the same.
There seems to be a consensus that the status quo won’t work for much longer. With that in mind, a few of us have set out to do what we can to change things.
Personally, I’ve started a working model of what I think needs to happen if the journalism industry is to survive.
As a test run of this model, a group of us set up a website to cover labour negotiations and a possible strike at our university during November 2010. We launched The Strike Situation on November 4, and it exploded faster than any of us expected.
Keeping this experiment in mind, and taking into account some broader observations about the state of the industry, I make two arguments about modern, digital journalism:
1) In the digital age, news media must go to audiences instead of expecting audiences to come to them.
Simply put, information isn’t a scarce resource anymore.
People no longer need to seek out information. Instead, information is brought to people, often in overwhelming amounts.
The design and approach of news organizations just doesn’t take this new reality into account. And I’m not just talking about newspapers. The same goes for broadcast news and even online news.
The days of news media being significant-by-definition are over. If the journalism industry continues taking a self-important attitude, it won’t survive.
In the coming years, journalists will have to work to convince society they’re still worth listening to.
2) A completely new and innovative approach is needed to monetize news.
The internet has proven to be extremely disruptive to traditional news mediums, especially for print, and has cut deeply into sales, audiences and revenue.
At the same time, the internet has yet to provide an effective way for news organizations to make money.
Online, banner-style advertisements have relatively little value, especially for local and small businesses. Not surprisingly, they also produce minimal revenue.
Also, charging for content online is both foolish (see: the Murdoch experiments) and contrary to the very notion of journalism.
Instead, producing money online will take a much more creative solution than currently exists.
The key word here in creative. Advertising and classifieds were innovative solutions to pay for news. The next solution must be equally as inventive.
Of course, this is just a general overview of my thoughts. Over the next couple months I’ll fleshing out these ideas in much greater detail.
Stay tuned.
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